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Consider, for a moment, the following three quotations, which I drew from various media sources:

• "The candidate said he will build more public schools if the charter schools do not step up to the plate and improve."
• "Traditional public schools can be a mixed bag, but the best of them are achieving results most charter schools can only dream of."
• "The media likes to fixate on the few bad apples among public schools, giving the impression that all public schools are mediocre at best and fraudulent at worst. But there are many shining examples of public school excellence nationwide."

The first two quotations seem apocryphal. What political candidate these days would utter the first? And who these days would portray traditional public schools as models to which charter schools should aspire? The third quotation will likely prompt some eye-rolling. Why would anyone seek to minimize the very pressing need to improve our public schools?

In fact, all three quotations are apocryphal, or at least semi-apocryphal. I basically made the words "charter schools" trade places with the words "public schools." Why? Because I wanted to highlight the asymmetry of the current education debate. Almost no one writes about the best traditional public schools.

In their original form, all three quotations would hardly have raised eyebrows. It is becoming an article of faith in national newspapers that charter schools are the only bright spots in a generally dismal public education landscape. But the original versions of those quotations are no better than the doctored versions.

There are wonderful charter schools that can teach us important lessons about school reform. How do we bring them to scale? But there are also wonderful traditional public schools that are succeeding in the face of big challenges, but you wouldn't know that from reading the papers. They, too, offer real lessons for other schools. (See, for example, Karin Chenoweth's new book, How It's Being Done, which profiles some excellent schools that don't get enough media attention.) On the other hand, charter schools and traditional public schools alike have a lot of work to do to improve their students' prospects.

I worry that the current national fixation on charter schools will send discussions of school reform off the rails. We can't blame casual readers--and voters--for concluding that charters are the magic pill, that a school's charter-ness somehow assures its success. But there's just so much more to reform than that.

I should note that we do not oppose charter schools. We also don't have any position on charter school caps. Our coalition is far too diverse for us to adopt such a position. But we do call for a more thoughtful national conversation about reform.

Let me conclude by eating crow. My recent posting on Jonathan Alter didn't contribute to the thoughtfulness of the national discussion. Jonathan Alter left a comment reinforcing his position and calling me out for the tone of my own comments. (Was it really Alter? I can't confirm that, but the comment did have an authentic ring. Even if the comment was from someone masquerading as Alter, the remarks about my tone chastened me). This blog has often called for greater civility in school reform debates, but my own comments were snarky and way over the top. I apologize for that.

Update: Jonathan Alter confirmed via email that he did indeed leave the comment.